Eli Rosenblatt joined the Department of Religion as an assistant professor in Fall 2024. His research and teaching illuminate Jewish texts, ideas, and practices in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular interest in the Caribbean and United States. His forthcoming monograph, “Creole Israel: The Jewish Atlantic World After Slavery,” takes up traditional tools— Hebrew, Yiddish, and co-territorial languages—but repositions Jewish multilingualism to reconsider the historical role of Creole and African Diasporic cultural formations in American Jewish life. His most recent publication “A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen” offers a new translation and analysis of original Hebrew liturgy produced and chanted in a synagogue during the final stages of the Boni Maroon Wars in early 19th century Suriname. A forthcoming study, “Black Christian Hebraism: Charles Lee Russell and the Afro-Protestant Encounter with Talmudic Culture, 1918-1948,” examines the first scholarly study of rabbinic literature by an African American scholar and church leader. At Illinois, Rosenblatt teaches introductory and advanced courses in Modern Judaism, including History of Antisemitism, Introduction to Judaism, and The Jewish Atlantic. Before joining Illinois, he was the Wallerstein Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Drew University.  He earned his PhD from University of California-Berkeley.